ULI visiting fellow Gabe Klein, who helped launch bicycle share in two cities, offers lessons from the differing experiences in Paris, Chicago, New York City, and Washington in UrbanLand magazine.
His conclusiom:
As cities roll out new shared transportation services in a public/private partnership (PPP) model, it is important to remember that it is a partnership and that the cities and private companies are in the rowboat together.
The PPP is definitely the model for the future, and these partnerships will fall on various points in the publicly funded/privately funded continuum. But they will only succeed to the degree that the partners embody the sharing spirit themselves so that the system works for all parties. If they paddle against each other, the end-user and taxpayer lose, and expansion and follow-on services that would have bettered the city and its environment may not be realized.
Also: Frances Bula’s piece on Vancouver among Cities Still Waiting for Bike Sharing
After checking out the bikeshare systems in Melbourne and Brisbane, the conclusion was inescapable: the compulsory helmet requirement, imposed by the national government, limits the flexibility of the system to the point where they never seem to reach a critical mass of use. And no one seemed to think it was likely the government cared enough to take on the issue of helmet use once it was in place.
A bike share system in Vancouver with a bike helmet law in place will indeed be a failure and a waste of tax payer money.
It is probably an oversimplification to blame the tepid reception to Melbourne’s bike share and therefore potentially unhelpful. There could be many other factors such as poor cycling infrastructure, the way the scheme is priced, the limited number of stations, poor marketing, the unatractive bikes and the local bike cultures. Even the helmet law may not be to bad but the protective benefits of helmets are lost by the draconian penalties and punitive local enforcement.